The U.S. Census Bureau has one of the most valuable and densely-packed web sites you’ll encounter. You’ll constantly find new information there that will amaze you with its obscurity and level of detail. Below are some of my favorite Census Bureau pages.

First and foremost is American FactFinder, which includes annual American Community Survey data. It’s the best place to get estimates since the last decennial census was undertaken. You definitely should familiarize yourself with how to navigate this!

Facts for Features and Stats for Stories are collections of statistics from the Census Bureau’s demographic and economic subject areas intended to commemorate anniversaries or observances or to provide background for topics in the news.

Warnings about polls: Many times there are concerns about the credibility or methodology of a pollster, so be cautious of sources. Also remember that polls always have a margin of error, which you should cite. Here are 20 questions journalists should ask about poll results.

Bonus tip: The J-school also subscribes to Statista, a searchable database of statistics, studies, dossiers, infographics and more, from over 100,000 vetted sources.

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Of all the research topics we teach here at the J-school, backgrounding is among the most important. Certainly, not doing proper backgrounding has great potential to make you look bad. You don’t want to do a friendly story on someone, only to be burned by not doing proper backgrounding.

My rather glib definition of backgrounding is “searching for information about people they don’t want you to know.” I do it as a matter of course in my job as a news researcher, but reporters should be able to do for themselves too.

You’ve already learned of some resources that will help you do backgrounding. For starters, you can do general article searches on people, businesses or non-profits in Nexis, Factiva or Access World News, as there will often be something written about controversial (or criminal) topics. Furthermore, you can search court databases for civil and criminal cases, using the resources in the Research Center guides for court records and criminal histories at both the federal and state level. (This blog has similar guides for both court and crime research, albeit somewhat dated.)

For this lesson, I want to point you to the Research Center’s public records guide and review some of the resources I think are most useful.

For people:

Accurint and TLO are undoubtedly the top resources for backgrounding individuals, as each provides a comprehensive compilation of public records (including criminal), contact and family information on a person. Both are available by subscription only and we do not have access to TLO here at the J-school, but you can visit Barbara Gray in the Research Center to have an Accurint report run.

Although there are other kinds of records you might seek on a person, checking for criminal records is the most common type of “backgrounding.” For the incarcerated, you can check inmate locators at the federal, New York State and New York City level. (For other state and county jurisdictions, check here, here and here.) In New York State, you can also check WebCriminal for court information on criminal cases with future appearance dates in many jurisdictions.

You can get company reports through J-school subscriptions to Hoovers and Mergent, as well as in the Company sections of Nexis and Factiva and the U.S. and Canadian Businesses sections of ReferenceUSA.

Looking for video online? Of course, there’s YouTube and the like, but what about professional databases with substantial broadcast archives? The J-school has subscriptions to such databases, which also feature superior search functionality.

TVEyes (student login info here) allows you to search TV programming from many networks via closed captioning, which along with getting video can also serve as an alternative method of getting (rough) transcripts not available in databases like Nexis and Factiva. (I’m also aware of the similar services Critical Mention, ShadowTV and Volicon, which we don’t have.)

Whereas the services above allow viewing of recent broadcasts, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive is a deeper archive of news broadcasts from major national sources–with streaming video available from CNN and NBC, and DVD ordering available from all sources. Also, keep in mind that a broadcast operation will usually have its own internal archive. At NBC, the searchable database is known as Media Central.

Although they don’t qualify as a professional subscription databases, the Internet Archive also has useful TV News, moving image and ephemeral film collections that you might explore.

Regarding graphical print archives, there are many more places to go.

We have access to PDF archives of the New York Times and Amsterdam News (via “Black Newspapers”) through the J-school’s subscription to ProQuest. Dates of coverage vary. In addition, the Brooklyn Public Library provides free access to PDF archives of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1841 to 1955 via Newspapers.com, which also has varying archives from more than 6,000 papers worldwide that you can access by visiting the Research Center and asking to use our subscription. Elsewhere on a national scale, the Library of Congress has a collection of newspapers from most states (including New York), ranging from 1789 to 1949.

We have access to many magazine and journal PDF archives through the J-school’s subscriptions to BrowZine, EBSCO MasterFILE, Gale Academic OneFile and JSTOR, which are aggregator databases similar to Nexis and Factiva, but are not limited to text only. Also, CUNY and the J-school maintain lists of where you can obtain articles by publication name, many of which are in PDF format.

UNZ.org has PDF archives of several magazines that are not under copyright. You have to peruse the list of titles to see which are available.

Google Books has scanned archives of many magazines, popular and otherwise. Billboard, Ebony, Jet, Life, New York, Spin and Vibe might be especially useful, but there are plenty more. These aren’t completely up to date, but do have deep archives. On screen images only, though. No PDF downloads. Similarly, Google News has scanned archives of many newspapers, including the Village Voice. Same deal with the lack of downloads.

This is the warning NBC uses for the sites above:THESE SITES ARE FOR REFERENCE ONLY. You will be connecting to external sites and all images must be cleared for on-air use, regardless of source. If you have questions, please contact the Rights & Clearances Department.

Bonus tip: Looking for photos? The New York City Department of Records Municipal Archives has an online photo gallery of over 900,000 images.

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With many courts at the federal, state and local levels, there is no “one stop shopping” for court research. In most cases, you’ll need to know the jurisdiction before you can find anything.

In many jurisdictions, particularly at the local levels, case information isn’t online at all. For those cases, you have no choice but to visit the courthouse or contact the court clerk to get info (unless you can get it from participating lawyers).

Of the courts that do have case information online, there’s no uniformity. Some post full case documents. Others provide only basic docket information. And many times, you’ll have to use a fee-based service to get the info.

LexisNexis has case information for the most jurisdictions–federal, state and local–but not all of it is available in the academic version universally accessible to CUNY students. See Barbara Gray in the Research Center for access to the professional version.

The Census Bureau has one of the most valuable and densely-packed web sites you’ll encounter. You’ll constantly find new information there that will amaze you with its obscurity and level of detail. Below are some of my favorite Census Bureau pages.

First and foremost is American FactFinder, which includes annual American Community Survey data. It’s the best place to get estimates since the last decennial census was undertaken. You definitely should familiarize yourself with how to navigate this!

Facts for Features & Special Editions consist of collections of statistics from the Census Bureau’s demographic and economic subject areas intended to commemorate anniversaries or observances or to provide background information for topics in the news.

Additionally, some excellent “third party” sites aggregate Census Bureau data. Below are a few of my favorites in that category.

The New York City Department of City Planning’s population page has some useful resources, including American Community Survey data and a map delineating Community Districts and Census Bureau PUMAs. (Baruch College’s NYCdata site also has New York statistics beyond just those from the Census Bureau.)

The University of Virginia Library has a great Historical Census Browser with data from 1790 to 1960. Need slave and slaveholder statistics? (Ugh.) This is one place to easily find them.

Last but not least, check out the All Things Census blog from the Pew Research Center.

Bonus tip: Barbara Gray has compiled a handout on Mining Census data for reporting that does an especially good job explaining the differences between the decennial census and the American Community Survey.

Opinion polls are also a great way to detect trends in the population. When most people think of polls, they think of political polling, but there’s much more to be found.

Polling Report is an aggregator of polls from major sources, arranged by subject.

Gallup and Harris are two reputable sources that conduct polls on a variety of topics.

Warnings about polls: Many times there are concerns about the credibility or methodology of a pollster, so be cautious of sources. Also remember that polls always have a margin of error, which you should cite. Here are 20 questions journalists should ask about poll results.

Looking for video online? Of course, there’s YouTube and the like, but what about professional databases with substantial broadcast archives? The J-school has subscriptions to such databases, which also feature superior search functionality.

Critical Mention was introduced in this semester’s first lesson when I mentioned getting closed captioning of programming as an alternative when transcripts are not available in Nexis and Factiva. (I’m also aware of two similar services called ShadowTV and ITV, which we don’t have.)

Whereas the services above allow viewing of recent broadcasts, the Vanderbilt Television News Archive is a deeper archive of news broadcasts from major national sources–with streaming video available from CNN and NBC, and DVD ordering available from all sources. Also, keep in mind that a broadcast operation will usually have its own internal archive. At NBC, the searchable database is known as Ardome.

Although they don’t qualify as a professional subscription databases, the Internet Archive also has useful TV News and “moving image” collections that you might explore.

Regarding graphical print archives, there are many more places to go.

We have access to PDF archives of the New York Times, Amsterdam News and Village Voice through the J-school’s subscription to ProQuest. The titles have varying dates of coverage. In addition, the Brooklyn Public Library also has scanned archives of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1841 to 1902. On a national scale, the Library of Congress has a collection of newspapers from selected states (including New York), ranging from 1836 to 1922.

You can get PDFs of current newspaper front pages around the world from the Newseum. Only front pages, though.

We have access to many magazine and journal PDF archives through the J-school’s subscriptions to EBSCO MasterFILE Premier and JSTOR, which are aggregator databases similar to Nexis and Factiva, but are not limited to text only. Also, CUNY and the J-school maintain lists of where you can obtain articles by publication name, many of which are in PDF format.

Google Books has scanned archives of many magazines, popular and otherwise. Billboard, Ebony, Jet, Life, New York, Spin and Vibe might be especially useful, but there are plenty more. These aren’t completely up to date, but do have deep archives. On screen images only, though. No downloads. Similarly, Google News has scanned archives of many newspapers, including the Village Voice. Same deal with the lack of downloads.

This is the warning NBC uses for the sites above:THESE SITES ARE FOR REFERENCE ONLY. You will be connecting to external sites and all images must be cleared for on-air use, regardless of source. If you have questions, please contact the Rights & Clearances Department.

Bonus tip: Looking for photos? The J-school has a subscription to AP Images and the New York City Department of Records Municipal Archives has an online photo gallery.

Posted in Lessons/handouts | Comments Off on Finding video and graphical archives

Backgrounding and fact-checking are related in the sense that they both fall under the umbrella of “due diligence” or “doing your homework.” Of all the research topics we teach here at the J-school, this is probably the most important. Certainly, not doing proper backgrounding and fact-checking has the most potential to make you look bad. As I said in my introductory backgrounding lesson in Craft I, you don’t want to do a friendly story on someone, only to be burned by not doing proper backgrounding. We already saw an example in class.

My rather glib definition of backgrounding is “finding out information about people they don’t want you to know.” I do it as a matter of course in my job as a news researcher, but reporters should be able to do for themselves too.

In the same vein, 100% factual accuracy in stories is a goal worth pursuing, no matter how tough it may be to achieve. Among the most common kinds of facts that need to be checked and double-checked (and triple-checked!) in any story are statistics, names, dates, ages, quotations, locations, titles and degrees. Preferably, you want to verify them via primary sources–as opposed to secondary–and then cite these sources, where appropriate. Fact-checking really boils down to answering two basic questions…

Are you sure?

Says who?

If you crave a little more detail on fact-checking, a few good accuracy tip sheets can be found here, here, here, here and here. And here is an example of what can happen if your fact-checking is lax.

What specific sources do I suggest? (Wikipedia? Ha ha. No!) While Accurint is undoubtedly my favorite backgrounding resource, there are plenty more you can use on my backgrounding handout, many (but not all) of which are also suitable for fact-checking. I particularly recommend government resources, and premium subscription databases like we have through the Research Center. One such database good for fact-checking is Facts on File, especially useful for finding dates and details of major events going back to 1940.

Then there are a whole host of court resources not on my backgrounding handout.

Again, keep in mind that primary sources are generally preferable to secondary sources, but that’s not to imply there aren’t unreliable primary sources or very reliable secondary ones. For example, people could easily lie, exaggerate or make errors on their (primary) Facebook pages, while Facts on File is a strong secondary source. And the more reliable sources you have for any fact, the better. Relying on a single source is asking for trouble.

Bonus fact-checking tip: Superlatives such as “only,” “never,” “first,” or “most” are often misleading and/or difficult to verify. Use them judiciously.

There’s more to search engines than just plugging in words. The best searchers use the advanced features. There are many places to find Google tips.

No mainstream search engines, even Google, search anywhere close to the entire web. They don’t index every page or database result, nor the entirety of many longer documents. What’s not retrievable via these engines is known as the “deep web” or “invisible web.” That’s why you need to familiarize yourself with many of the sources I’ve reviewed this semester. You can’t rely on Google exclusively.

With many courts at the federal, state and local levels, there is no “one stop shopping” for court research. In most cases, you’ll need to know the jurisdiction before you can find anything.

In many jurisdictions, particularly at the local levels, case information isn’t online at all. For those cases, you have no choice but to visit the courthouse or contact the court clerk to get info (unless you can get it from participating lawyers).

Of the courts that do have case information online, there’s no uniformity. Some post full case documents. Others provide only basic docket information. And many times, you’ll have to use a fee-based service to get the info.

LexisNexis has case information for the most jurisdictions–federal, state and local–but not all of it is available in the academic version universally accessible to CUNY students. See Barbara Gray in the Research Center for access to the professional version.